Google nanobots: Early warning system for cancer, heart disease inside the body

Google wants your body to host a search engine, using a pill to diagnose health issues like cancer or heart disease. The nanoparticles inside would travel through the bloodstream and send their findings back to an exterior sensor.

The project, run by the company’s secretive Google X research and development
division, is still in its infancy, the Associated Press
reported. The technology ‒ which would be less than
one-thousandth the width of a red blood cell ‒ would use
disease-detecting nanoparticles, ingested via a pill, that send
data back to a sensor on a wristband.

The internet behemoth hopes that the pills will be able to
identify minute changes in body chemistry and act as an early
warning system for diseases like cancer. Some cancers, such as
pancreatic and ovarian, are usually detected only after it is too
late for treatments to work, and thus are highly fatal.

Dr. Andrew Conrad, the molecular biologist who created a
cost-effective HIV test that is widely used in blood-plasma
donations, is heading up the latest Google X medical project.

"What we are trying to do is change medicine from reactive
and transactional to proactive and preventative," he told
the BBC. "Nanoparticles... give you the ability to explore
the body at a molecular and cellular level."

"We want to make it simple and automatic and not
invasive," he said to AP.

The pills wouldn’t just be able to seek malignant cells.
Different sets of nanoparticles would look for different diseases
or markers. One set might look for evidence of atherosclerosis ‒
a hardening of blood vessels due to fatty plaques that can lead
to a heart attack or stroke. Another could monitor chemicals in
the blood, like high levels of potassium, which is linked to
kidney disease. Google is trying to create porous, magnetic
nanoparticles that would alter the offending cell, protein or
chemical and could later be recalled, the BBC reported.

"Then [you can] recall those nanoparticles to a single
location - because they are magnetic - and that location is the
superficial vasculature of the wrist, [where] you can ask them
what they saw," said Dr. Conrad.

The molecular biologist revealed the project Tuesday at the Wall
Street Journal’s WSJD Live conference. “Every test you ever
go to the doctor for will be done through this system,” he
said. “That’s our dream.”

The dream is at least five to seven years away, according to the
Next Web. Researchers still need to identify coatings to help the
particles bind to the specific kind of cell, protein, chemical,
etc. And Google has no idea how many nanoparticles would be
needed in each pill, or whether it would vary by its intent. The
size of the delivery device has yet to be determined as well: The
wearable device needs to be small enough to be unobtrusive, yet
contain a battery that doesn’t need frequent recharging, the WSJ
reported.

Google X would still need to pass government hurdles as well. And
a pill full of nanoparticles would face “a much higher
regulatory bar than conventional diagnostic tools,” Chad A.
Mirkin, director of the International Institute for
Nanotechnology at Northwestern University and a founder of three
medical nanotechnology companies, told the WSJ.

Privacy is also a concern, with Google’s main businesses
profiting off users’ data, as well as consumers’
fears of hacking. But Conrad sought to downplay the unease
that the internet giant’s R&D division would treat the human
body as a search engine.

"We are the inventors of the technology but we have no
intentions of commercialising it or monetising it in that
way," he told BBC News. "We will license it out and the
partners will take it forward to doctors and patients.”

"These are not consumer devices. They are prescriptive
medical devices, and you know that doctor-patient relationships
are pretty privileged and would not involve Google in any
way," he added.

Even if a pill with diagnostic nanoparticles is a pipe dream,
it’s still one that is welcomed by the medical industry.

"There is an urgent need for this. If we can detect cancer or
other diseases earlier, then we can intervene with either
lifestyle changes or treatment,” Professor Paul Workman,
chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research in London,
told the BBC News website. "How much of this proposal is
dream versus reality is impossible to tell because it is a
fascinating concept that now needs to be converted to
practice."

Google made the project public to find investors and partnerships
to further develop ‒ and eventually license out ‒ the technology.